In recent years, many companies have begun creating Agile Centers of Excellence (COEs) within their organization, as a way to help transform their teams from whatever they were previously doing into following better Agile Practices. At first glance, these COEs look similar to a traditional Project Management Office (PMO), but they most certainly are not. While a PMO is most often focused on governance, control and measurements, an Agile COE is much less about control, and much more about creating support and alignment within the teams, so that they can successfully govern themselves.

What is the Agile COE?

The COE is a group that helps foster and spread the growth of the Agile movement within a company. At its heart, it is a group that identifies, collects and communicates the best practices uncovered by teams within the company, so that teams have solutions available to help with their own experiments. In this way, the COE becomes a force-multiplier for the transformation, sharing the results of multiple experiences of many teams with everyone. While not about enforcing standards and creating work where none is needed, it is a collection of tools for teams to use to aid in their journey towards being high-performing.

From the perspective of the developers, it should be the place that will help foster experimentation, share best practices and retrospectives, and